Roman à Clef: NY Times Book Review Locks the Door on Fiction
In a recent post on the NY Times' online Talk to the Newsroom feature, one Jacob Silverman asked the newspaper's book review editor, Sam Tanenhaus, "why the Book Review seems to review a significantly greater amount of nonfiction than fiction."
And here is Tanenhaus' learned answer:
For the simple reason that so much more nonfiction is published.
There must have been particularly slim pickings in the literary world last week: The 17-title contents page fronting yesterday's Sunday Book Review section featured only one novel: Lydie Salvayre's "Everyday Life," tantalizingly described by the Times in this subhead: "A psychodrama unfolds among workers at a Paris advertising agency." Who could resist reading such a potent potboiler (or at least its review)?
In a small concession to disgruntled literature lovers, one of the reviewed nonfiction books was John Sutherland's "How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide."
Now that's helpful. If only they'd also give us some wise guidance on what novels we might actually want to read!
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CULTUREGRRL SPEAKS on museum issues and ethics, arts journalism.
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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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